If you are a devout Christian or know some people who are, one of their traditions is to eat fish on Friday as a symbol of abstinence of eating meat – sheep, goat or beef. The author though about the eat fish on Friday and asked himself where did the fish come from and what fish were they eating and how did European society develop? The book Fish on Friday by Brain Fagan, Basic Books, NY, 2006 helps answers those questions. At the present time, for most of North America if we want something, we go to the supermarket or go to many markets and we can find a fish store and buy it off the shelf to cook the food, but if you cast you mind back to the early centuries, supermarkets did not exist, so where did the fish come from. Citizens would traditionally go to markets, at first the average person would have bought fish for holy days and their choice was eels. As Christianity increased in numbers the choice switched to herring, partly because people learned how to keep it using salt. The next step was the cod and many people have eaten salted cod, now it is whatever fish you like.

The fishing industry had to change to meet the demands of the public. This means some communities benefited from the change, some did not. The control of the market was to ensure the customer was getting a quality product each time they went to market at a price that paid dividends to the owners. Mr. Fagan’s books delves into the changes in technology or changes in preserving and shipbuilding.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, at each of the stages of fishing, there evolved a group of companies which seized the market or had a monopoly until the type of fish or alternative changed. The monopoly could last 50 years or more, as we have seen in today’s economy things do change sometimes faster than what we would like, but they do change. As a shareholder in the dividend paying stock, you have to constantly look at what financial moat does the company have to continually pay its dividend. You may want to do this after the dividend has been paid, but it this economy people are always looking for alternatives and no matter the market, having a monopoly or monopoly like conditions helps in making money but people move to what is the best alternative for them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions